Reflections

This week at All Souls Church, there was a short reflection on the sermon, Gift, Grace, and Letting Go. in which the speaker talked about the change of seasons, and how just as the leaves fall from trees, so to must we let go of that which has served its purpose.  The sentiment hit home, deep within my core, and I immediately embraced it.  Now, perhaps Hiking Viking or Vegitect might understand its resonance, and internalize it with some bittersweet sentiment.  And if so, he would be right to be so self-centered, I did go there...With the falling of the leaves...

But also, it is a metaphor for so much - almost every thing in our lives which has served its value and given its gift must be surrendered to realize its full grace.

Tonight, I had drinks with M, my colleague from work whom I've written about here before.  M is my colleague, my friend, and warm, loved, character from my dreams underwritten by a score of sexual tension.  M is in his last week at the office before he begins his new job at a private investment fund.

His departure has truly shaken me.  Since he started with us almost four years ago, M has transformed our little non-profit, loosey-goosey shop to a serious operation.  Mostly through his talents for accounting, budgets, systems, and operations, he built a framework for planning, policies, and finance.  It was always good knowing that M was around - he inspired my trust and my confidence, and that was always a relief.  He unburdoned so much, and that was truly a gift.  But he gave many others.

Beach in November

Fenwick Island, DE

The beach in the off-season is so wonderful.  I love its vast expanses - ocean, sky, sand in the clear, crisp air - that are not nearly as noticeable among the summer throngs/thongs.  I like its different rhythms - games inside, not outside; and warm foods, instead of iced ones.  I like how the glow of the house lights beckon you in the 5 o'clock darkening evening.  And that the broad winter-night starry sky meets the horizon, a scene not seen from the city or the even the wooded camping trip.  I like the empty streets, the closed seasonal shops, and even the boarded-up houses that suggest you have it all to yourself.  I love how the ocean - as it always does - draws you to its edge, but, this time, not in.

I [HEART] Philadelphia murals

There are many reasons I love my childhood hometown of Philadelphia.  It has wonderful distinct urban neighborhoods.  Society Hill, Rittenhouse Square, Fairmount, South Philly, West Philly, University City, West Oak Lane, Mount Airy, Old City, Chestnut Hill and Queen Village are just a few of the dozens of  true communities each with individual heritage, history, and flavor.   It's a local town - not filled transplants and transients.  When someone asks you where you went to school, they mean high school.

And my high school, in particular, elicits quite a response, if you're a local.  Central High School, founded in 1837, is the nation's second oldest public high school (after Boston Latin).  An all-boys school until 1983 when the elder sisters of some of my best friends took the school district to court, and won the case that the single sex admission policy was unconstitutional.  While Girls High (how's that for two lackluster high school names?), a college preparatory magnet school located down the street was considered Central's peer, Central's facilities, alumni old-boys' networks of Philadelphia's finest judges, lawyers, and doctors, and its alumni fund and college scholarships were far superior.  Central became co-ed, and I was in the second co-ed class in Central's history.  "2-4-7  Ho!" - as we used to say, for at Central you were not known as Class of '88, but as Central's 247th graduating class (a carry-over from when there were two graduating classes per year in January an June).

But I digress....

Menu: Thanksgiving 2010 - a shared cooking feat and eating feast

Appetizers

Shrimp Cocktail

Aged Cheddar 

Smoked Gouda

Cashews

Vegetables with White Bean Dip

- Wine and Beer -

Dinner

Roast Turkey with Sage and Sausage Stuffing

Maple Sweet Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Braised Brussel Sprouts

Puree of Roasted Carrot, Parsnips, Turnips and Leeks

Cranberry-Orange Relish

 - Beaujolais Nouveau -

Dessert

Traditional American Pies

(pumpkin pie, apple pie, and pecan pie)

with fresh whipped cream

- Coffee and Tea -

RSAmazing - Changing Educational Paradigms

[If the embedded video isn't showing here, click here to YouTube Link]

Wow!  I was recently introduced to RSA Animate, and their Vision Video Webcasts (above and more later).  This is such cool stuff!   And here's the scoop...

The 250 year old Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce is now tagged "RSA - 21st Century Enlightenment."  An idea lab and exchange for creative thinking, design, innovation and social progress that hosts a network of RSA Fellows, provides platforms for experts to fuel public discourse, and supports interdisciplinary projects for social change solutions.  Unfortunately, the website is not nearly as well-presented and organized, as their individual products.  Creativity and brilliant minds are messy, I guess.  But I digress.

When I first came across RSA Animate, we were discussing how to present and package relatively complex research and ideas so they are easy to follow, understand, and ultimately stick.  If you take 12 minutes or so to watch the video link, you will see what I mean.  [Please pause to watch video link here, then continue after the jump]  

Carrot Soup

This weekend, I made a lovely, warming carrot soup, flavored with orange, sherry, and tarragon.  This soup was absolutely scrumptuous.  The carrots gave it earthy base, coupled with the richness of sweet cream butter.  The orange added  a fresh and sweet tang.  The sherry provided a distilled, slightly sharp taste.  And tarragon had a lingering, gorgeous, delicate, aromatic effect.  

A wonderful beginning to the French country menu for Saturday's dinner at the beach.

Confetti

Hanging around

This shot was taken the day after our meltdowns.  I am the luckiest mom.

Mommy Dearest

I'm tired and grumpy today after a night of little sleep.  I tossed and turned, and worried about the CEO search at work and how it will all affect me; the state of merger negotiations and if there's still hope; the irksome ambiguities of my dating screen; vacillating on whether I'm bullish or bearish on my retirement fund; concerned about my body and health deteriorating -  my metabolism screeching to a halt and my reading eyes going blind starting the day I hit 40.  Oh me, oh my...to just have certainty about the future.  I know, I know....HA!  At most, I can have comfort that it will all be OK - which I generally do, but last night it decided to take the slippery slope downward.

So I took my exhaustion and uncertainty out on my daughter this morning.  As she readied for school, excited about her day, we just - as mother and daughters do - pushed each others' buttons.  It started with excess conditioner in her hair, discovered only after she was fully dressed, and me trying to rinse/comb it out without her getting back into the shower.  Which led to a wet dress, and a wet floor, and wet towels, and painfully combing through tangles.  Which led to tears (hers) and impatience (mine) and whines (hers) and yelling (mine).  And drama, that included stomping (hers) and slammed doors (hers) and cursing (mine - aloud, but to myself, if it makes a wee bit of difference in your opinion of me, dear reader).  And more crying and yelling (hers and mine respectively).

And her cries and whines were amplified in my tired and impatient brain, reverberating like a huge train barreling through my bedroom or an airplane taking off on my roof.  Just unbearable head noise that I just desperately wanted to end right at that very second.   I can handle a conversation, maybe even a negotiation - but not this screaming dear animal child!  And if it also makes a wee difference, dear reader, at one point she is sobbing and crying to me, but looking at her reflection in the mirror.  Which led to me getting even more exasperated, because I am watching my 6-year old Drama Queen audition for her Little Orphan Annie role.  Which led to realizing - thank god - that my patience had run its course, and my temper was taking over.  Which led to a time out (mine...yes, mine).  

And when it was all over, and we were sitting there amidst wet towels late for school and work, there were hugs and apologies (mine and hers, but mostly mine).  And I feel like a horrible ogre.  And I feel guilty.  And I feel like the Worst Mom Ever.  And I am embarrassed and ashamed that I do not have more patience and calm in me, especially with my dear child, who is wonderful and still innocent, and tremendously unblemished.  And I'm still sad and upset that I am not a better mom and a better person.

What I'm Wearing Today

Charcoal gray sweater dress (Eileen Fisher); mocha brown shawl (vintage); chocolate brown opaque tights (Target); bark brown leather heels with criss-cross leather straps (indigo by Clarks); Art Deco-design bronze dangly earrings (airport store)

7:45am, Dear Daughter: Mama, you look pretty.

8:00am, au pair: Are you going out tonight?

8:30am, Dear Daughter's teacher: I love those shoes.  Where are they from?

8:35am, mom friend at school: Those earrings are sweet.

9:25am, office colleague 1: You look nice.  I like what you're wearing.

9:30am, office colleague 2: Oooo, I like your shoes. 

10:00am, office colleague 3: Do you have a date tonight?

12:15pm, dental hygienist:  I like your shawl.  It's so beautiful.

4:45pm, my boss:  That dress looks great on you.  Who makes it?

10:00pm, random stranger on subway:  Oooo, I love your earrings.

Thank you very much each and all!  I got two takeaways - 1.  Women really dress for each other.  2.  I'll be wearing this again!

Smoking is absolutely filthy!

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is proposing new large-print, highly graphic warnings on cigarette packs, such as the one to the left.  There are 36 more being proposed, and nine will be chosen.  These warning will comprise 50% of the front and rear panels of each cigarette packet, and 20% of any cigarette ad.  The images are appropriately disgusting  and jarring.

I think smoking is revolting.  It smells bad. It looks bad.  It makes people sick - fatally so.  It irritates non-smoking bystanders.  The foul smell sticks to clothes, hair, furniture, carpets, window shades, and tableware.  It turns teeth yellow and brown.  Kissing a smoker feels like kissing an ashtray. Sooner or later the young , hipster smoker turns into a hacking, addicted, aged-beyond-their-true-age, old, sick person smoking in the rainy, cold under an awning.

If my own personal horror does not make it clear enough, here are some hard facts from the NYTimes article on the new FDA warnings:

Public health officials are hoping that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s anti-smoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers. Every day, roughly 1,000 teenagers and children become regular smokers, and 4,000 try smoking for the first time. About 400,000 people die every year from smoking-related health problems, and the cost to treat such problems exceeds $96 billion a year.

Smoking is increasingly stigmatized these days - if I have friends or colleagues that do smoke they would likely not be "out" in their habit.  In all honestly, I have less respect for smokers. I was devastated when I learned that Obama is a smoker, albeit a reticent and humbled addict. I'd even go as far to say that I find them disgusting themselves.  But I can't go that far because in all honesty, I feel sorry for them and their addiction and our shared human frailty.

I hope my daughter never starts.  Admittedly, I have smoked cigarettes at various times in my life.  I tried my first cigarette at about 12 years old...

Barclay's Cycle Hire - London

Real Science

The New York Times has a fascinating article, "Voices: What's Next in Science" which gives ten predictions from leading scientists from a variety of disciplines - biology to genomics.  These are near-term predictions, based on the directions the field is going.  And quite-frankly, some of them are mind-blowing.

My personal favorite is from Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University:

“We’re going to see scientific results that are correct, that are predictive, but are without explanation. We may be able to do science without insight, and we may have to learn to live without it. Science will still progress, but computers will tell us things that are true, and we won’t understand them.”

If I understand this correctly, it means computers will tell us things that are correct, and that even if we cannot understand them we will just have to trust.  Sounds more like Faith than Science.  And yes, this is science, not science fiction.  Amazing! - check out the other predictions at the link above.

Late on the Uptake: DC Mayoral Election

This post is long overdue, but still fascinating -  to me, at least.

In last week's DC's mayoral election, nearly one-in-four voters cast their vote by write-in for incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty, who had decidedly lost his primary bid 53 to 46% to his opponent, and the ultimate victor, Vincent Gray.  That's right, in the final election, twenty-three percent of votes were taken by a write-in candidate, who explicitly stated he was not pursuing a write-in campaign, and conceded to Gray well over a month earlier.  Talk about a divided city!

For me, there are many 'what if's?' that I realize a well-run democracy cannot accomodate. For example, in the primary, Republicans, Independents, and the Statehood Green party could not obviously not vote for Fenty, but may have indeed considered him the best candidate.  It is also interesting, because many Fenty supporters gave their vote to Gray in the final election, even though he was not their candidate, but was the best of the choices. I suppose I'm asking, what if there were not primary party elections, but rather the whole city votes the best candidate?  Makes me question party politics at all in this day and age.  And particularly in this city of 95+% registered Democrats.

I, myself, was at a loss to support Gray, but did not have other viable options. I would not vote for the other party candidates, as I did not think they had experience or merit; I also did not want to write-in Fenty (though he was my choice) because he explicitly said he was not seeking a write-in.  In the end, I abstained on my mayoral vote on my ballot, which was a very painful and difficult call - and one that I'm not even sure I was comfortable doing.  My thinking was, "I will not explicitly support Gray with my vote, but nor will I vote for another candidate that I think is no good; nor will I vote for a candidate who is not running. My silence is my tacit dissent."  But what good is tacit dissent, if nobody hears it?

As it happens, write-in non-candidate Fenty won three precincts in my ward, and won two precincts each in two other wards. As mentioned, overall, twenty-three percent of the votes went to non-candidate Fenty -  not bad for someone who is not even running! 

An Ideal Husband

No plans for tonight, so I considered either returning to some of my favorite places from my last two London trips in spring and summer or exploring some new ones.  I decided to get out there in new territory, but was not ambitious or energetic enough for Brick Lane, as I hoped, so I decided to buy some half-price theatre tickets.  I'm in London after all.

I found a nice bargain for the newly produced Oscar Wilde play, An Ideal Husband, at the Vaudeville Theatre on The Strand in London's West End.  It officially opens with press night next week on November 10.  But the soft opening gives the performers the chance to try out their energy and timing on actual London theatregoers and hapless tourists.

It was thoroughly enjoyable.  The witty banter and clever observations on social rituals, morals, hypocrisy, gender roles, and marriage were brilliant, though required rapt attention and a quick mind to catch it at its best.  I had limitations on both this evening after a long week.  This was coupled with a warm, crowded and cramped theatre had me nodding off during the first act, and trying to ignore my mild discomfort in the second act.

Actors Samantha Bond, Eliot Cowan, Alexander Hanson and Rachel Stirling worked well together on stage.  Samantha Bond gets top billing in her portrayal of Mrs. Cheveley, and she does indeed likably play this unlikeable character.  Her co-star, and real life husband, Alexander Hanson, plays Sir Chiltern in wonderful existential comic angst.  But Eliot Cowan's timing and brilliant physical acting, playing Lord Goring, absolutely stole the show for me.  

Meeting Room

Blogging While Intoxicated

It's 930pm back at the hotel, and I've had a few drinks with colleagues - seems like a good time to run through the day.

9am -  I'm on the steering committee on a group that works with AIDS and children.  We have our two-day business meetings here in London.  I'm new to the bunch, and they are well-established as a group of 14 colleagues.  Still, my debut on the steering committee was not so bad.  We're meeting at the offices of a private foundation in County Hall, Westminster, and the board room windows overlook Westminster Bridge, Parliament, and Big Ben.  Speaking of...he chimed twelve times to announce lunch and rang through the open windows that let in that sound, as well as the wind and damp air, and which gave us the varying natural light of the overcast, partially cloudy - no partly sunny - day...which had us alternatively closing and opening the windows and shades to accommodate the ever-shifting London weather.  I was right there in the moment.  And while new, I didn't say anything too off, despite the technical talk and associated jargon about children and AIDS.  I said just enough bright things to earn my keep and not have this be a boondoggle trip, or be a blowhard, like the talk-to-much colleague to my left who drove me batty.

415pm - I  left on the early side for a meeting at a hugely, wealthy private foundation.  I made my way over to Clifford Street, off Regent and Conduit.  What a trip - this little uber-wealthy area -  and further proof that I don' know London at all.  There on the corner, Louis Vuitton and Burberry, as well as Stella McCartney among other haute designers.  It's all kind of ridiculous, but Louis Vuitton windows did have an absolutely stunning display for Dewali - India's Festival of lights.  Simply Gorgeous.

5pm - My meeting went well with the evaluation specialist there.  I spent a lot of time talking about metrics and measurement, and throwing around technical terms, though also quite a skeptic.  It's all a lot of blah-blah-blah...but I also really care about it, so I can bullshit with the best of them.

615pm- I took the Bakerloo line back to Waterloo,and since I chose the wrong "Way Out," I walked all around the bloody station on the streets to get to my destination.  When train tracks are in the way there is not a lot of choice.  Ugh.  I was tired and annoyed that I had -  once again - choosen the wrong direction.  I pride my sense of direction, but I always seem to start off on the wrong track - once oriented, I'm all cool.

7pm- I met 7 colleagues for dinner, where I enjoyed scallops wrapped in pancetta on pumpkin puree and kale.  Scrumptious...with a rocket and parmesan salad with 2 glasses of red.  Simply delish- I am rarely happier than eating good food, accompanied by some wine and good people chit-chatting about nothing in particular.  John (Canada) and I discussed politics, while Dortje (Netherlands) chimed in on some gay harassment in Utrecht, and Linda (South Africa) helped polish off the after-dinner bottle and told about finding finding temporary housing in Geneva.   Stefan (Germany) paid the bill - he's been promoted and has a huge expense account to go with his new stratospheric title.  A nice way to bond with this group - and yes, be more effective and accepted tomorrow.

9pm - Catherine (US) and I enjoyed two more glasses of wine at the hotel bar, and talked about the things that smart, professional women do.. fertility, marriage, dating, birth control, and long-distance relationships.

Sigh...I love my life.  Lucky me.

Look Left

Dispatch from London

Tube strike wreaks havoc on my life (and London, in general):  Today's tube strike brought gridlock to London, and a virtual standstill to Underground operations.  Limited services meant some lines were completely suspended; some stations were completely closed, and where trains were running they were infrequent and overcrowded.  I used a combination of taxi, private hire car service, tube, and walking.  


London map starts to stick in my head by way of my feet:  I covered a good part of London on foot today from Oxford Circus to Soho to Leicester Square to Trafalger Square to Westminster to Waterloo.  I lost my bearings a few times, and started off in the wrong direction, but quickly reoriented and got on my way.  I think I'm finally beginning to connect London.  I've got the Southwark down from Waterloo to the Tate Modern to The Cut, onward east to London Bridge and Canary Wharf. I also think I get Vauxhall and Battersea Power Plant in the other direction on the south side of the Thames.  Today I connected some of the northern side, but without a sense of the river nearby, I get completely dizzy disoriented.   Still, I think I now have a sense of Westminster to Hyde Park, Marble Arch and Edgware Road.  As well as how Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Soho, Chinatown, and Leicester Square connect - though I have to say, I am not so interested here.  Tomorrow, I may actually get to Brick Lane.  It's amazing how walking will get you through and around a city - it's finally clicking.


New jet lag remedy discovered: Travel the first week of November, the week between the time changes in Europe and the US.  For one week only, when London has already changed back to standard time and before the US changes to standard time a week later, the time difference is just 4 hours.  Jet lag is 20% easier to overcome than the rest of the year!